


Guidance

by Chrome



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Caduceus Clay Needs a Hug, Campaign 2 (Critical Role), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, Episode: c02e085 The Threads Converge, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, Spoilers for Episode: c02e085 The Threads Converge, Team Cleric Looking Out For Each Other As Is Good and Right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-08 04:30:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21470098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome
Summary: Jester clues in to how Caduceus has been looking out for her--and realizes that he could probably use some looking after as well.
Relationships: Caduceus Clay & Jester Lavorre, Caduceus Clay & The Mighty Nein
Comments: 28
Kudos: 185





	Guidance

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through campaign two, episode 85, and my first Critical Role fic.
> 
> (R & C, I DO mean the spoilers thing, read at your own risk.)
> 
> Many thanks to Jelly for the beta-read!

Jester waved to the doorman on her way out of the Evening Nip, the second-to-last to go. Only Caduceus lingered behind her, moving slow and deliberate. Deliberate in the sense of each movement being thoughtful, Jester amended, not deliberate in the sense of dragging his feet. Slow was merely Caduceus’ way, although—

—well, maybe not quite this slow. Jester couldn’t tell if he was leaning on his staff more than usual, if the care in his steps was the usual degree of meditative or a result of pain.

Before the grease, and the acid, the first thing to stain the floor of the Invulnerable Vagrant had been Caduceus’ blood, courtesy of the two daggers in his back. That had been only the previous afternoon. Jester hadn’t checked the wounds and if she hadn’t, she knew no one else in the party had. She should have remembered. His gasp and the sharp way he’d told them he wasn’t alright stood out clearly enough in her memory. A flash of guilt went through her. Why hadn’t she thought of it last night?

Before she could say anything, the Gentleman’s voice—the voice of her dad, she had a dad!— carried across the room.

“Mr. Clay,” he said. Caduceus paused and turned back, one hand steady on the staff. Jester spun back too, watching, unable to hold back a smile at her father—her father!—as he spoke.

“Thank you for the tea. I’ll let you know if I hear anything about your family.”

With his back to her, Jester couldn’t see Caduceus’s expression, but she could see the way his shoulders relaxed and his ears lifted. Happy, then. “Thank you,” he said, and even before he nodded and turned back, she could hear the smile in his voice.

“That’s right, you gave him tea last night!” Jester chirped, falling into step besides Caduceus the second that the door shut behind them. They ended up bringing up the rear of the party. Jester bounced beside Caduceus as he scanned the landscape, eyes trailing across the people passing by on the left, across their friends ahead of them, to the people and stores on the right, and back again, over and over. He’d always been watchful, but the fight with the Cadogeist yesterday had put all of them on high alert.

“I did,” Caduceus agreed.

“What did you talk about?” she asked when he didn’t elaborate. That, she was certain, wasn’t deliberate—the withholding of additional information wasn’t his style. Caduceus read faces better than anyone she’d ever met—better than Molly even—but his eyes were on the streets and buildings and people, watching for danger, and he tended to take words at their face value.

“Mmm. Family, mostly.”

“You asked him about yours?” Jester said. “It’s just that that’s what it sounded like!”

“I asked if he could let me know if he knew anything about them. How the Blooming Grove was doing, or where they might be,” Caduceus said. He was definitely walking slower than normal, hand tight around his staff, shoulders stiff. He didn’t limp or stumble, but Jester guessed that might be from force of will alone.

“What else did you talk about? About families?” Jester prodded. “He said to me—what he said to me, they were good ideas about families, I think.” She worried at her lower lip with her teeth.

“...that they can be difficult,” Caduceus said after a moment of thought. “And complicated. But that we ought to be honest with them if we can.”

Jester nodded, trying to look thoughtful. She only needed to try for a few seconds, because Caduceus might have been the most perceptive member of their party, but Jester had plenty of wisdom of her own and the pieces clicked into place almost immediately.

“You knew,” she gasped.

“Knew what?” Caduceus asked. He turned to look at her for the first time, blinking slow, expression genuinely confused. It cleared after a second of looking at her. “That he was your father? Yes.”

“When? When did you know?”

“When you turned into your mother,” he said.

“I couldn’t tell at all,” Jester confessed. “Did you really know then?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“You didn’t say anything!”

“Confronting him then…” Caduceus paused for long enough that she started to wonder if he’d lost his train of thought before he suddenly resumed. “It wasn’t going to help, I didn’t think. He’s a man who doesn’t like to feel cornered. It’s best to be straightforward with people, but sometimes they need time.”

She nodded. “But you talked to him about me.”

“I talked to him about myself,” Caduceus corrected. “And about family. And gave him a piece of advice, I suppose. A little guidance.”

Jester nodded, but the gesture felt too sedate for the warmth surging up through her. It was so like Caduceus to go out of the way for them, to quietly make sure Jester had what she wanted with no word of his part in it. But being used to his kindness didn’t mean—or shouldn’t mean, although maybe recently it had—taking it for granted. Suddenly resolved, she lunged to the side and flung her arms around him in a hug. He stumbled a little, grip slipping on the staff, but she was strong enough and holding him tightly enough to keep him upright even without it bearing his weight.

He seemed to register this, letting go and leaning into the hug instead. Jester paid no mind to the sound of the wood clattering against the ground and instead pressed the side of her cheek to Caduceus’ chest.

“Oh,” he said. Even surprised, Caduceus was a good hugger. His arms wrapped snugly around her and he relaxed, trusting her to keep them upright. He rested his chin on the top of her head. “That’s nice.” She could feel the rumble of his deep voice even through his armor. “That’s really nice. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” she said, closing her eyes. “For talking to him for me. I know he isn’t the best father, maybe, but I want to know him anyway. Is that silly?”

“No,” he said. “It’s not silly at all.” She basked in the certainty of his answer.

In the middle of the street, lagging behind the others—it wasn’t really a safe place to do this, especially in light of the prior day’s attack, but she’d felt certain in that moment that Caduceus had needed to be hugged. Now that she was doing it, she knew the sudden feeling had been correct. She’d hugged Pumat Sol yesterday, and she hadn’t been able to feel even half so many of his bones. And, almost imperceptibly beneath the flowing, colorful fabrics he wore, Caduceus was trembling.

She settled a hand flat against his back, where she could feel the stitched-up seam of his coat where one of the daggers had plunged through. She didn’t like it, she decided instantly, and only the fact that she’d have to let go to find the lodestones in her bag stopped her from casting Mending immediately. She’d do it later, she resolved; for now, she found the second scar on the fabric with her other hand and cast Cure Wounds, letting the magic sink through the fabric into the twin injuries below.

When he let out a breath, she felt it in his chest more than heard it. “Thank you,” he said. “You should save your spells, though. We don’t know what’ll happen today.”

“You were hurting,” she said, and as she said it her eyes popped open and she drew back. “I didn’t check, yesterday. I should have checked that you were alright. What happened was so scary…”

“Don’t worry,” Caduceus said, smiling at her. He kept a hand on her shoulder in place of the staff, which still lay on the ground beside them. “I’m quite good at healing.”

“You’re good at healing us,” she corrected. “You don’t heal yourself so much—you healed yourself hardly at all yesterday and you were bleeding so much!” She nudged the staff with her toes, kicking it upwards in an acrobatic maneuver and catching it so that she could return it to his hand without forcing him to release her shoulder. “You need to take better care of yourself, Caduceus,” Jester reproved. “And—and we need to take better care of you. Even when you’re taking care of us.”

“I appreciate it,” Caduceus said, releasing her shoulder to take his staff in both hands. “Really.”

“You shouldn’t.”

They both jolted. The rest of the party was standing ahead of them, fanned out in an awkward line—Fjord in the lead, Caleb behind him with Nott, Beau closest and standing with her arms crossed.

“Were you eavesdropping?” Jester demanded. “For how long?”

“Since Deuces dropped his damn staff and we all turned around thinking we were getting attacked again,” Beau snapped.

“I’m sorry,” Caduceus said, ears flattening against his head. “I didn’t mean to...alarm anyone.”

“Don’t apologize,” Beau complained. “We’re apologizing.”

“Speak for yourself,” Nott interjected.

Beau took a deep breath. “Fine.  _ I’m _ apologizing because we should have checked in yesterday. You good, Deucey?”

“I’m okay,” he told her. “I promise.”

“He’s still hurting from yesterday,” Jester added. “I cast Cure Wounds but I don’t know how much it helped.”

“Wounds?” Beau demanded. “Didn’t you heal yourself?”

“I was just sore,” Caduceus assured. “Don’t worry.”

“Next time you’re hurting,” Jester said. “You’re going to tell us. Okay? I’m a cleric too. I can heal you even if I’m also good at other things!”

“Okay,” Caduceus agreed.

“Did it help?” she asked, anxiously, and then clarified, “The spell.”

“The spell was very nice,” he told her. Then he added, “The hug was even nicer.”

“You can have another one!” she said, delighted, and flung her arms around him again. He sighed, but it was a happy sound, a relieved escape of breath as he hugged her back.

When Jester finally stepped back and looked up, a little anxiously, Beau wasn’t glaring anymore. Instead, she was scanning the street. So were the others—the party, loosely gathered around them, standing sentry so that they could have this for a moment.

The gift of it wasn’t lost on Caduceus either, his eyes going immediately to the others. “Thank you,” he said, again.

Beau knocked her shoulder against his, gently enough that Jester thought she had probably picked up on the way Caduceus was still putting his weight on the staff. “So, what,” she strode forward as they all fell back into a loose group. “Are we going somewhere?”

“Always,” said Caduceus, still smiling as his eyes went back to watching the city around them. Jester grinned and skipped ahead, stopping to glance back when she’d put a few feet between them. It could have been her imagination, but she thought—she hoped—that his steps had become at least the smallest bit lighter.

**Author's Note:**

> If you can, please leave a comment--they mean a lot.
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr or [@chromecatalists](https://twitter.com/chromecatalists/) on Twitter. Come say hi!


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